A new Twist in Belltown dilemma

Residents seek respite from bars, want stricter rules

Ted Rodemeyer's dream to open the restaurant and lounge Twist is meeting resistance from residents in its Belltown building.

Ted Rodemeyer's dream to open the restaurant and lounge Twist is meeting resistance from residents in its Belltown building.

Photo: PAUL JOSEPH BROWN/P-I

Photo: PAUL JOSEPH BROWN/P-I

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Ted Rodemeyer's dream to open the restaurant and lounge Twist is meeting resistance from residents in its Belltown building.

Ted Rodemeyer's dream to open the restaurant and lounge Twist is meeting resistance from residents in its Belltown building.

Photo: PAUL JOSEPH BROWN/P-I

A new Twist in Belltown dilemma

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On the surface, the new lounge Twist that's about to open in Belltown doesn't seem like the kind of place that would bring much controversy.

The meals would come in small portions meant to be shared, co-owner Ted Rodemeyer said, to evoke conversation. The music would be turned down low, so as not to drown out the table chatter. There will be a bar, but the owners say they don't want anything as noisy and rambunctious as the former Club Medusa nearby, where Rodemeyer was once the manager. He quit Medusa, after all, tired of being part of the club scene that's taken over Belltown.

But news that Twist is moving in is causing an uproar, largely because it is going into the ground floor of the Pomeroy condominiums. The residents upstairs envision lines of noisy, drunken smokers outside and dance music thumping through the night.

Though Rodemeyer insists that isn't the kind of place he wants to open, the residents demanded the city step in. After a sometimes-contentious meeting, the lounge owners, the city and representatives of the market-rate Pomeroy condominiums and two nearby low-income apartment buildings this week struck a "good-neighbor agreement" that Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis sees as a possible model for getting residents and clubs and bars to co-exist.

Rodemeyer was still angry on Monday, believing he'd been strong-armed into the deal. The city threatened to get the state to revoke Twist's liquor license if Rodemeyer and his partners -- his wife, Lisa Martin-Rodemeyer, and David Lyon -- didn't agree to a number of conditions, such as keeping lines outside to less than 20 feet, barring the use of promoters and DJs in the club and pledging to serve food late into the night to quell public drunkenness.

"They've ruined what should be a joyous moment that I've worked for all my life," Rodemeyer said.

Finding a way to get bars and restaurants and people peacefully sharing neighborhoods like Belltown is an important goal for Mayor Greg Nickels, who has made the densification of neighborhoods around downtown the hallmark of his administration.

The problem, Rodemeyer's business partner Lyon said, is that many of the condos were built as "mixed-use" developments with storefronts on the ground floor. "In Belltown, the demand is for bars and lounges" in those storefronts, he said.

John Cook, a 61-year-old retired mergers-and-acquisitions executive who is on the condo board, understood Rodemeyer's frustration. But having seen the noisy bars and clubs move in over the last decade or so, Cook said, "We were going to make damn sure one wasn't going to move in downstairs."

On a broader level than whether Cook and his neighbors can get some sleep, the debate illustrates Belltown's transformation from a run-down, working-class neighborhood to one with upscale aspirations overtaken by raucous night life, and now changing again, with an increase in residents who see it as a place not to party but to live.

Axis and Bada Lounge

In 1997, Malevitsis and Malia, both with strong culinary pedigrees as co-owners of Ponti Seafood Grill, had high hopes when they opened Axis amid what were still the beginnings of a burgeoning Belltown scene.

They had a brick oven and an elegant dining room. They had an open "exhibition kitchen" where diners could see chef Alvin Binuya conjure his creations featuring duck and octopus.

Coming on the heels of the opening of other high-end restaurants such as Flying Fish, El Gaucho and Queen City Grill, Axis' opening at First and Battery helped move the neighborhood away from the old Belltown, where the liquor at the old Frontier Room was cheap and potent, the Rendezvous was a scary place, and serious pool players gathered at the 211 Club by a sign that said, "No Whistling."

But that all ended when Axis closed its doors around Christmas. By the end of its eight-year run, the restaurant was less known for its rotisserie chicken than as a meat market.

Opinions vary over how clubs and bars took over Belltown and doomed the aspirations of restaurateurs such as Malevitsis and Steven Han, who opened Bada Lounge in late 2001. Han had envisioned a French restaurant with Asian influences, but Belltown was struggling to recuperate from the dot-com bust, he said.

At that time, Han said, "all the condos and apartments (in Belltown) were half-empty. (But) even (when) the economy is slowing down, 21-year-olds will still come out and drink."

Perhaps Bada Lounge's clean, nearly all-white futuristic look gave the wrong impression of what it was trying to be, Han said. "I don't know if Seattle was ready for something that sexy to be a restaurant," he said.

Other lounges opened up, bringing more competition. Eventually he, too, got tired of running what had essentially become a bar.

He's closing Bada Lounge later this month and plans to reopen around mid-May as a Japanese restaurant.

Malevitsis said the other lounges that opened began bringing a younger club scene to Belltown. That and Axis' layout -- in which the dining room was behind an often-crowded bar, led to the impression that it was a place to hook up, not to find fine dining.

In New York, Axis would have derisively been called "bridge and tunnel," meaning a place frequented by the suburbanites, tourists for a night from New Jersey, Long Island and the suburbs who'd descend on the city by bridge and by tunnel.

Not that Axis didn't have its moments. "We had a lot of celebrities, professional athletes and musicians," Malevitsis said.

But it wasn't quite the scene Malevitsis or Binuya had envisioned.

Binuya, who has since opened his own restaurant, Madoka Pan-Pacific Restaurant on Bainbridge Island, said: "The biggest thing is we had to make everything familiar. We couldn't put anything on the menu that was unfamiliar, even something as simple as duck."

Instead of appreciating his food preparation at the exhibition kitchen, Binuya said, "They'd call to you and ask you for a beer order."

Malevitsis said that at the end of Axis' run, he was tired of the bar scene. When he got an offer from the owners of Cowgirls Inc. -- which brought the mechanical bull to Pioneer Square -- to buy the building, he accepted. Malevitsis plans to go back to his restaurant roots, and is looking for a space for a Mediterranean restaurant he wants to open.

The new owners of Axis' old spot are planning a steak and chops restaurant that will become more of a bar late at night. One of the new owners, Wade Peterson, said he's not planning a club like the one in Pioneer Square, but an establishment that would be a restaurant in the early evening and a lounge later.

Back to Twist

Now, the same nightlife that doomed Malevitsis' and Han's aspirations is threatening the city's goals for more residents.

Charles Mohseni, a 40-year-old commercial real estate investor who lives in the Pomeroy, said: "I like to go to nice chic places, too. But I don't want to come home and feel like I'm going to a club. If you want to walk your dog, you have to go through this line of people."

Cook, the Pomeroy resident who has lived in the neighborhood since 1971, said: "The neighborhood has changed quite a lot. ... We've had our plate glass window (of our condo) broken downstairs. Around closing time, we have people on the streets who are apparently too drunk to open their car doors without setting off the alarm."

Rodemeyer and his partners at Twist say they're victims of the nightlife as well -- by reputation.

"They're putting a gun to my head," Rodemeyer said. "I'm running out of money to fight this and I've been told that if I don't sign I can't get my liquor license so it seems that I have no choice but to forfeit my rights as a business owner and sign it.